Over twenty years and eight visits to the Mayan
region, American composer Jeremy Haladyna has ventured ever more deeply into
the magic and mystery of Maya culture, and given something back in the form of
his unique body of work, THE MAYAN CYCLE.Spanning media and genre, from music for a single
instrument, to voice, to computer, to DVD-audio, to
full orchestra, this wide variety of pieces seeks to address everything from
the most ancient roots of Mayan cosmology to contemporary Mayan political
struggles.Here is a selection
from the Cycle.

A Mayan-inspired work starring a
scratch turntable?It seems
unlikely.But read on….the
scratching in this piece is both necessary and allegorical.

For the ancient (and present-day)
Maya, “zero” is a different sort of concept.Not absence, but potential.Not void, but completion.Not the end of calendar time, but a resting place.And if one thing to which “zero”
equates is the luub,or “great resting place,” that only
underlines the perilous difficulties and uncertainties in getting there.For in order to reach the luub,
a number of heavenly bodies must cooperate in an elegant mathematical dance
that had better not go wrong.

Since inventing and composing in “Mayascale”
in 1999, I had been wanting to put Mayan calendar time into sound again on a
bigger scale.This I managed to do
by late January 2006…in the form of “Luubscale,” an Earth/Venus system of 39
notes exactly interpreting the great luub
cycle of 104 years.For it is only
that often that Earth years, Venus years (as we Earthlings observe them) and
the Mayan sacred almanac all fall into momentary alignment.

All sounds
heard in this piece that smack in any way of pitch (even the howler monkeys I
recorded in Mexico) have been carefully tuned into this 39-note system, which
has no relation whatsoever to any Western-based tuning or music theory.

Is there even so basic a foothold
as an octave?Not really, unless
one were to factor the entire scale as a pseudo-octave, since it takes the
whole six and one half piano octaves of the scale for Earth and Venus to cycle
round to share the same pitch again.But only turn to the troublesome 260-day almanac, astrological tool of
the Mayan priests, and the real agony begins.As the almanac also trudges up note-by-note there is no
synchrony with Earth or Venus—through the whole of the scale.It would take exactly thirteen entire
scales[or, think Kurzweil
keyboards] stacked end-on-end to make this happen, and it would happen, but in
an astral frequency range lost altogether on humans.

So, returning to scratching and the
metaphor.The metaphor for the
difficulty in getting these megacycles to align is the scratching.The stereo scratchtracks are also tuned
into the Luubscale system and were prepared right alongside the main
tracks.Moreover, they are exactly
the same length as the main tracks, even if that should become a fiction as
soon as the CD operator signals the scratcher to start.Here is the key: “fiction” because the
scratching is potentially non-linear.From that moment there are two
systems of time in friction-based
competition—and the time readout on the turntable will never again match
that of the main tracks exactly.Yet the challenge tossed to the soloist is to make this time battle
succeed…to somehow bring these twin systems into accommodation, just as if they
were an allegory for two grinding wheels of Mayan time.

I.Luubchords
(track 5):Thirteen chords in an
ascending progression are besieged and imperiled by the scratching, which
represents non-linear time.Each
chord represents an entire “Luub” scale—one of 13 bricks stacked one on
another in an ascent to the great Zero, or unity, of 37, 960 days (104 yrs.).

II.
Escalation (track 3):Two Mayan time-wheels of today really
do turn in this movement: one on phases of the moon and the other on the sacred
almanac divided into quarters.Since
they don’t match up, the Maya of highland Guatemala overlap (imbricate) them,
then climb mountains on mathematically dictated nights in ritual
observances.The scratching here
exactly marks the imbricated portions at first,then becomes freer.

III.Borgia
(track 1):The time crisis has
passed, not without great tension, and we are safely and peacefully on the
other side of “zero.”A
mystical contemplation in “Luubscale” of the Codex Borgia, the ancient Mexican
picturebook in which evidence for Mayan Venus numbers was found.

PRECIOUS FIRST RAT [2000]

In the mythical tradition of the
ancient Maya,a rodent has a large
role in saving the world as we know it.Precious First-Rat helps the twin Hero Boys to avenge the death of their
father at the hands of the Lords of Darkness.These young boys, First Lord and First Jaguar (or, favoring
their more exotic Maya names,Hunahpu and Xblanque) succeed in outwitting the Death Lords at every
stroke, through their courage and their cunning.And it is all a question of a metaphoricalBALLGAME.

The death of First Father,who sired the Hero Twins, came with a
ballgame.One could hardlyhave expected the Lords of the
Underworld to play fair, and they didn’t.They prepared a razor-sharp ball covered with crushed bonefor thematch withFirst Father.Sadly, henevereven plays-–heisdecapitated after
failing a pre-game trial.In the
end, he will be “reassembled” by his Twin Boys,but only after they have proven themselves in trials.Little by little, the Twins come to an
understanding of their mission of vengeance.It is as though they are “predestined”to accomplish the final victory, with
the help of Precious First-Rat.

Precious First Rat tells them about
the old ballgame equipment that had belonged to their father and which is still
in their Grandmother’s house,way up in the rafters, tied up there.The twins are very excited and make a bargain with this
Progenitor-Rat.In exchange for a steady supply of squash seeds, corn and beans
(literally until the end of Time), he will dash up into the rafters and chew
away at the bindings with great industry(flute solo,p. 1) until
the ballgame equipment, cut loose, tumbles down.

In order to distract their
Grandmother, the Hero Twins ask her to make them their favorite chili
sauce.She does so, and reflected
in the steaming hot chili sauce bowls the Twin Boys see the image of Precious
First-Rat up in the rafters, hard at work.When the time is finally right, the Twins, professing their
great thirst now after the chili sauce, manage to lure their Grandmother
outside to get them water.Then
they snatch up the ballgame equipment as it tumbles to the ground, the rubber
ball bouncing(bars 122-125).

Soon thereafter the Hero
Twins,practicing in the
ballcourt, offend the Underworld gods with all the noise they are making “topside.”Monster Owls are dispatched to summon
them to play down below.With
their newfound equipment, theyjump at any such chance, and are successful before the big game in
foiling a whole series of dastardly tricks and deeds set up by the Lords of
Xibalba.And they are successful
in the big game, too, even though one Twin must“lose his head” on the way to final victory.

Was Precious First-Rat, then,
theirknowing friend and
ally?The carved panel from Toniná
in the Mexican state of Chiapas gives us cause for wonder.Is he mocking
the Lord of Death by grinning and following so closely behind?Or is he a conspirator, like the
serpent in the Garden of Eden, intending to equip the Hero Twins only so as to
hasten their demise?The answer to
this mystery,we are sure, lies
somewhere in the manic and tangled blueprint of a tiny rodent brain
(synapse-is, mm.26-38).

GODPOTS (Ollas) [2003, rev. 2008]

Godpots
recounts the strange rite of the most isolated Mayan group,the Lacandón,such as it was witnessed around the turn of the century by
the American archaeologist Alfred Tozzer.Now losing their cultural identity to interaction with and assimilation
by modern Mexico, the Lacandón were comparatively untainted when visited by
Tozzer.

Tozzer witnessed a rite among a
supposedly “primitive” tribe which nonetheless unified a great many aspects of
the Mayan vision of cosmology, space and time.What needed to happen each year was this: on the advent of
the new corn harvest, the first fruits had to be offered to the gods in a
lengthy ceremony which lasted sometimes up to a month.Images of gods were built into the rims
and sides of incense burners and these clay sculptures were kept together in a
fenced enclosure and raised off the ground on altars: literally a “god-house.”Corn, meat, fermented beverages and
other fare were repeatedly “fed” to these small representations of the
essential deities…this, along with all-important “copal” incense.Eventually,the entire population of the encampment
would partake in the eating, but not until the gods had been well satisfied.Just as with the course of the sun in
the sky, the Maya would have the “ollas” or “braseritos” facing east to begin
with.Then, as they gained
power,they were turned 90 degrees
to face the center.Eventually some, who were losing power and being replaced by new images,
were turned 90 degrees again to face the west as their influence waned.Every year certain of these were “phased
out” and replaced by newly made images.At the end of the ceremony, these older, western-facing ones would be
quietly removed to an isolated place in the jungle, and left there, secretly
cached.

In the music, the flutists undergo
this same acquisition of power with their transit from one side of the stage to
its center.Then as the “power”
wanes, they migrate to the far end and one by one self-extinguish.In all this they are urged and egged on
by a xaman who concludes the
piece with a dark meditation on the bass flute.

The ceremony of the godpots or ollas
is thus about the necessity for man to participate in nature’s constant
renewal, acknowledging it and assisting it in order to help perpetuate it.It also gave man a chance
to “plead his case” with nature, attempting to influence variables such as
rain,fire, hurricanes, disease
and so on through a delicate balancing act with the idols–favoring those
who could propitiate much needed gifts of nature in a given season, and
slighting those who seemed to the Maya “out of balance.”

ONLY ARMADILLOS THEY DANCED [2008]

For
string quartet and scratch turntable

“Only
armadillos they danced…”

[Mayan
Popol Vuh, part III]

Hunahpu and Xblanque, the Maya
heroes, are twin boys whose lively victory over the lords of the Underworld
avenges the death of their father.This snapshot/scene from the Mayan epic story finds them dancing for the
dismal Lords of Misery.They do an
entire suite of character dances…armadillo, weasel, whippoorwill, sword
swallowing, and a dance on stilts.We hear only their armadillo dance, suggested by the scruffy noise of
the turntable.In fact all its
scruffy sound is made from digitally “scraping” and “scratching” a hard shell
very like that of the armadillo.

The chief lords of the Underworld,
One and Seven Death, are captivated by the frankly magical and superhuman feats
of the boys, and this will prove their undoing as they demand to be let in on
the fun.This little occasional piece has
comforted me like a penance for all those armadillos I flattened while driving
Texas highways a few decades back.Their poor eyesight marks them as frequent sacrificial offerings to the
center median or to the dusty shoulder.But what they lack in lateral quickness,these armor-clad amblers make up for in vertical lift,since—quite without basketball
shoes—they are capable of jumping directly up several feet from a
standing start.This springiness
finds its way into the core material of the piece in various rambunctious ways.

The new, untried combination of
Scratch [turntable] and Scrape [string quartet] I use here actually seems
wholly natural given the parameters both use to modify the sound.Pressure and speed are the heart of the
equation, and neither turntable nor violin bow will respond the same way twice
without real attention to these common variables...made surer only by practice.

Thirteen, that essential Mayan
factor, needed to be salient in the hero boys’ dance.A canonic section has violins trading statements of a 3-bar
phrase with viola.The time
signature through the canon shifts so as to constantly state 13 in this
way:7/6/7,6/7/6, 7/6/7,6/7/6eighth
notes.These two canonic voices
sharing the stage are, of course, the boy twins:Hunahpu and Xblanque.The canon grows more and more furious as the two pound the ground in a
miniature Mexican hat dance, the gyrations of their little legs photographed in
the cello.

INTELLIGENT LIFE ON OTHER FLUTES[1990]

This electroacoustic composition
treats sampled ceramic-fired flutes to an harmonic treatment in floating,
reverberant space.Interestingly,
the pitch system is the Turkish one, based on 53 commas to the octave.But the instrumental sounds are very
Mayan and would be not out of place in the 8th century.These sounds recall their most
magnificent Mayan cognates:the
tiny figural sculptures that are also instruments, found in abundance on the
island of Jaina in Campeche…and in a modern collection at the Popol Vuh museum,
Guatemala City.

TOLLAN [2008]

II. Snake Mountain

I had wanted for some time to
attempt a piece for the raspy reed stops of UCSB’s Lehmann Hall organ, allied
to the Mesoamerican concept of Tollan,
“Place of the Reeds.”The addition
of an oboe would make the reed metaphor more salient still.In this case, the Mayan name for this
reedy place, Puh, is neither as comely nor as universally recognized as the
Nahuatl one.But though names might
differ, all the peoples of the region revered this same fuzzy locale.Why?The answer: Tollan was the birthplace of prehistory, the
place that furnished the patron gods, the divine ancestors whose beneficence
smiled on the ancient urban centers of Central America.

For the Aztecs, it was a violent
place.From atop Snake Mountain,
always a prominent feature on any site map of Tollan, the dismembered body of
Coyolxauhqui was thrown down in disgrace.This was her punishment for matricide, and it was meted out by the
wrathful Huitzilopochtli, the solar hummingbird and battle-god of the Aztecs.

That old legend regarding Coatepec,
or Snake Mountain, leapt startlingly to life in 1968 when, in digging tunnels
for the Mexico City subway, workers found an ornately carved stone at the foot
of what proved to be the ancient Aztec main temple pyramid.This was a momentous find:the Templo Mayor, and at its feet, a
large, ornately carved stone representing the dismembered body of Coyolxauhqui,
as though the pieces of her carcass had been thrown down from Snake Mountain
just as in the story.

But if we really would find the
first--and authentic--”Place of the Reeds,” it would be the Olmecs, shrouded in
mystery, who would likely write the map, taking us into their marshy homelands
of Gulf Coastal Mexico.This early
proto-culture is only now yielding its secrets to scholars, and these included
the gifts of the calendar and writing system to the Maya and all the great
following central cultures.Their
mystique, hidden behind reeds, is their strange obsession with were-jaguars
(compare: were-wolves) and the snake cult.

In summer 2007, my carefully laid
plan to revisit the Maya region having been blown into tatters by a hurricane,
I went looking fo Tollan.For we
have a United States Tollan, a place so ancient that it speaks mutely of human
occupation too early for any writing system, and thus is only distantly echoed
in Paiute Indian legend.Nevada’s
ancient Lake Lahontan is nearly dry now, but small pockets of lakeshore still
remain, surrounded by priceless caves that have yielded human remains
impossibly old.

Near Pyramid Lake and Spirit Cave,
I found what I was looking for, and more.I was shown ancient skulls from the “place of the reeds” hidden away in
kitchen cabinets.In just a few
days, I fell smack into a disturbing and suppressed “X-files” world of
archeology that I never imagined could exist.But it does.

PUCZIKAL PETEN [Hearts of Yucatán](English version) (1991-2).

Here is a musical reaction to that
collision of two worlds brought about by the Spanish conquest of the Mayan
empire.The wrenching change that
resulted was on an order that we can nowadays scarcely imagine...and look for
again only in the context of contact with empires intergalactic.In this striking document from the year
1562, a village schoolmaster admits having been party to a Mayan heart
sacrifice–undertaken inside the village church!He is the “witness” of this third person account, committed
to paper in the presence of the infamous Diego de Landa, head Provincial of all
the Franciscan missions of the Yucatán.This confession, like the others Landa compiled for his dossier, was
most likely extracted via torture: all the same, for some historians there is
too much richness of detail—and consistency one to another–in these
verbally delivered accounts for them all to have been invented on the
spot.It seems indeed possible
that the Indians,only just
conquered,continued their
sacrificial ways in secret–often at night–while keeping up
appearances for the Spanish.Landa
would predicate a horrendous, swift, and most excessive response on these
depositions.To this many Maya
succumbed.No heroes nor villains
are profiled in this musical rendering of their intrigue, only a certain
marveling at the strength of human conviction when torn between belief systems
and fueled by oppression.

source:

archives
of Don Diego Quijada, Lord Mayor of Yucatán. I. pp. 103-8.

English
translation: Inga Clendinnen, used by permission of Cambridge Univ. Press.

Dr. JEREMY HALADYNA, Director of UC Santa
Barbara’s Ensemble for Contemporary Music, holds prizes and academic
qualifications from three countries. Jeremy, a laureate of the Lili Boulanger
Prize and diplômé of the history-rich Schola Cantorum on Paris’ Left Bank,also holds advanced degrees from the
University of Surrey (U.K.) and the Univ. of California.He has taught undergraduate composition
at UCSB since 1991, and was named to its permanent faculty in March, 2000.His own past teachers include William
Kraft, Karl Korte, Eugene Kurtz, Jacques Charpentier, and Joseph Schwantner.

In addition to his performing
activity he teaches orchestration and is on the faculty of the College of
Creative Studies, UCSB. As pianist, composer, conductor and organist, he has
long been committed to the espousal of new music. His own music has been heard
at Carnegie (Weill) Hall; King’s College, London; St. John’s Smith Square,
London; South Bank Centre, London; the Monday Evening Concerts, Los Angeles;
St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; All Saints Church, London; BMIC, London; and the
National Museum of Art, Mexico City. In December 1999 he premiered his The
Vision Serpent at the Chopin Academy, Warsaw during
a guest residency, also lecturing on his “Mayan Cycle,” already some 20 years
in evolution.

In September, 2007, Godpots
(Ollas) from the cycle came to
Carnegie Hall, and then to the 2008 finals of the Fischoff Chamber
Competition.In October,2000 he was invited to present excerpts
from the cycle as the subject of a colloquium at Kings College, London.In 2009, excerpts were similarly
presented to audiences in Istanbul.BothEn
la Estera del Chilam Balam and Aluxes!
from the cycle have been previously released on Neuma records. In
music of William Kraft, he is recorded as pianist on CRI and Albany.

His Mayan
Cycle now stretches to twenty-six pieces,
including Zaquico’xol,El Llanto de Izamal, The Maya Curse Pedro de Alvarado,
Pok-ta-Pok,The Oracle of 13 Sky,
Copal, and the Jaguar Poems.Details at: www.mayancycle.com

Australian
flutist Lisa-Maree
Amos, has appeared as Guest Principal Flute with
the Boston Symphony and the Pacific Symphony in the USA, the BBC Symphony
Orchestra in London including the famous Prom Concerts at the Royal Albert
Hall, and as Principal Flute of the Colorado Music Festival where she has
performed many concertos and chamber works and given masterclasses.Ms. Amos has recorded for NMC,BMIC, Innova recordings, BBC Radio 3
and Classic FM in London, and has broadcast across the USA for many classical
music stations and programs. She has received awards from the Royal College of
Music, English Speaking Union, Countess of Munster Trust, Aspen Music Festival
and was twice the recipient of the Chamber Music Award from the prestigious
Tanglewood Music Center in the USA. A prizewinner from the Royal Over-Seas
League in London, Lisa-Maree made her Wigmore Hall debut in 2003 with Jane’s
Minstrels – and she traveled with this contemporary ensemble to the USA
and Scandinavia in addition to many Festivals (Harrogate, Spitalfields,
Brighton amongst others).In
addition to performing with many of the orchestras in London for over a decade,
Ms Amos was a Live Music Now artist and a member of several small ensembles
that performed nationwide in Festivals and Concert Series.Lisa-Maree
was recently appointed as Principal Flute of Orchestra Victoria based in
Melbourne, Australia, and enjoys a variety of musical activities from
recording, chamber ensemble and large orchestral performances and working with
the Australian Ballet and Opera Australia.

AREON
FLUTES,a professional flute chamber music ensemble, provides audiences a fresh
new outlook on traditional chamber music.Noted for innovative programming and collaborations, Areon is quickly
establishing itself in the USA as a premier chamber music ensemble.In addition to utilizing the
traditional “four C flutes” model, Areon Flutes incorporates every member of
the flute family in its programming.The group’s performances are notable for creatively engaging its
audiences with unique staging, theatrics and choreography.

Within the past few seasons, Areon
Flutes–featuring flutists Jill Heinke, Kassey LeBow, Tamara Maddaford and
Amelia Vitarelli–has received high praise for their remarkable
performances.Their New York debut
in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall in September, 2007 received rave reviews: “These
players know what kind of new music pleases audiences and critics alike” and “The
group itself was memorable; they are a treat to all the senses” [Anthony Aibel,
New York Concert Review].

In May 2008, Areon Flutes was
awarded the Bronze Medal at the prestigious and internationally recognized
Fischoff Chamber Music Competition at Notre Dame University.This recognition marked the first time
in the competition’s 35-year history that a flute chamber music ensemble
reached this elite position.For a
current schedule of Areon events and more detailed information, please
visit:www.areonflutes.com.

YOUNG ARTISTS STRING QUARTET

UCSB
is the only of the UC campuses to offer a graduate string quartet program,which was founded in 1985.Receiving special funding from the
Humanities Division of the College of Letters and Science, it supports four
talented young players who concertize together as the Young Artists String
Quartet.Additionally the group
enhances music-making in departmental efforts across the board, notably new
music.This group attracts
applicants far and wide and has frequently included foreign nationals.Its current membership as reflected on
this recording: Dimitry Olevsky, 1st violin;Katie Waltman, 2nd violin;
Kimberly Fitch, viola;Kathryn
Mendenhall, cello.

Tracks
1-3,5-6,recorded at UCSB Sound Recording, Kerr
Hall

Recording
and Mastering Engineer:

Kevin
Kelly

Editing:Kevin Kelly, Jeremy Haladyna

Portrait
of Jeremy Haladyna by Danielle Terhune, 2008.

Godpots
is a live recording from the 2008 Fischoff National Chamber Competition, final
round.Used by permission.